Ars Technica
385 stories
When beloved apps turn expensive
Developers of long-established software are raising prices sharply, betting loyal users will pay more rather than leave.
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Ford's Fathom puts home battery power in a $30K truck
Ford's new sub-$30,000 electric pickup includes bidirectional charging built in, letting owners use it as a home backup battery without expensive add-ons.
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DeepMind's Genie 4 adds audio and realistic humans to AI worlds
Google DeepMind releases an upgraded world model with better physics, native audio, and human speech, rolling out to paying users soon.
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iPhone Duo screens failing within hours of launch
Apple's new two thousand dollar foldable is developing display defects almost immediately, with some units breaking before setup completes.
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Boston Dynamics Employees Protest ICE Robot Dog Sale
Hundreds of Boston Dynamics workers demand halt to robot dogs sold to ICE.
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Musk accuses Ukraine of violating Starlink terms
Elon Musk says Ukraine used the commercial satellite service for offensive drone strikes, but Ukrainian officials deny the claim and say technical limits made it impossible.
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Startup powers up with underwater volcano test
Endurance Energy ran the world's first subsea geothermal power plant near an active volcano almost a mile down, proving the concept works but facing steep challenges ahead.
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AI clones are silencing indie game developers
Indie developers are hiding their work to protect it from AI-powered copycats that can replicate games in days.
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ReactOS clears NTFS hurdle toward Windows compatibility
The open source Windows alternative can now install directly to NTFS drives, closing a decade-long gap in its development.
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Pennsylvania warns of congenital measles cases
Pennsylvania's health department alerts doctors to a resurgence of measles in pregnancy and newborns, a condition unseen in the US for decades.
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Polestar measures what performance feels like
A study with Oxford researchers uses heart monitors and brain electrodes to quantify the human experience of driving a high-performance car.
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Apple's human touch matters in an AI world
Apple's new Apple Music rebrand showcases handcrafted work in a behind-the-scenes video, highlighting the value of human creativity as AI-generated content floods daily life.
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OpenAI models arrive on Google Cloud
OpenAI's latest GPT models are coming to Google Cloud and its Antigravity coding tool, giving enterprise customers more AI options beyond Google's own Gemini.
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EA shuts down BioWare after 30 years
Electronic Arts has closed the legendary RPG studio behind Mass Effect and Dragon Age, ending development on the next Mass Effect game.
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Enterprises waste 28 percent of software budgets on unwanted upgrades
A survey of 2,018 CIOs finds that enterprises spend nearly a third of software budgets on upgrades they believe will harm performance, with little power to refuse.
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Tesla profits plunge 43% as costs soar and credits dry up
Tesla's third-quarter earnings reveal a sharp drop in profitability despite flat revenues, driven by rising expenses and the loss of lucrative regulatory credits.
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Xbox charges for cloud streaming of games you own
Microsoft is charging 24 to 40 cents per hour to stream games players have already purchased, a model that echoes arcade pricing but requires upfront game purchases.
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Pinball Expo 2026: Past, Present, Future
Stern Pinball dominates market with 90% share as homebrew and VR innovations reshape pinball's future.
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Flanagan's Carrie remake excels but stumbles at the end
Mike Flanagan's eight-episode Prime Video series reimagines Stephen King's classic with depth and nuance, but a crucial plot change undermines Carrie's character arc.
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The $15 billion AI startup reshaping how doctors work
OpenEvidence, an ad-powered medical search engine, has captured nearly two-thirds of US doctors in three years, but faces questions about accuracy and competition from tech giants.
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SpaceX targets weekly Starship launches by early 2027
Elon Musk says SpaceX will attempt to catch both stages of Starship on the next test flight and reach a weekly launch cadence in the first half of 2027.
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PHP emergency patches coming for critical flaws
Two severe vulnerabilities in PHP are being patched within hours, affecting millions of websites worldwide.
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Meta removes 'train' from AI terms after legal backlash
Meta softened its commercial terms of service after experts warned it could scrape news sites to build AI without paying licensing fees.
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Police seize vaccines in raid on RFK Jr.-backed trial
Guinea-Bissau authorities raided researchers planning a hepatitis B vaccine trial on newborns that Kennedy's CDC had funded with US taxpayer money.
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Musk wants to merge SpaceX and Tesla into one company
Elon Musk says combining his space and automotive businesses would help both pursue artificial intelligence, but the deal faces regulatory scrutiny and shareholder approval hurdles.
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Microsoft's Project Helix console could cost $1,200 to $1,800
Microsoft is planning a high-end gaming console for 2028 at a historically steep price, while internal disputes over its handheld device's operating system threaten the project.
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JustWatch launches its own streaming service
The streaming guide platform now offers free ad-supported movies and paid subscriptions, aiming to fuel its advertising business.
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Slate opens Chicago showroom for $25,000 electric truck
The startup's first retail space lets customers see and configure its bare-bones pickup before production begins later this year.
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Japan launches Phobos sample return mission
Japan's five-year MMX mission lifts off to land on Mars's largest moon and bring back the first samples from the Martian moons.
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Meta Muse leaks secrets through shared links
Researchers found Meta's new AI agent exposes sensitive business and personal data when users share conversations, prompting the company to suspend the feature.
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Polymarket's $600m ghost trades after elections ended
Prediction market saw massive trading on losing candidates months after results were decided, raising questions about market manipulation.
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Meta's new terms could let it train AI on news sites for free
Meta's updated commercial terms of service may give the company legal cover to scrape news publishers' content for AI training without paying licensing fees.
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Tesla's Roadster promises 383 mph with nitrogen jets
Elon Musk revives the Roadster with stunt technology, but rivals already outperform his claims and his track record on delivery is poor.
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Ray-Ban Meta glasses caught recording without consent
A bug in Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses recorded conversations without users activating the AI assistant, turning privacy fears into reality.
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Kennedy's FDA plans to ignore unproven peptide drugs
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants the FDA to stop enforcing rules against peptides his supporters sell, despite staff scientists saying they are unsafe.
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Why Neverwinter Nights still thrives after 25 years
BioWare's 2002 RPG was designed for community creation, not story. That choice made it obscure, and immortal.
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Rep. Torres proposes bill to make games owned, not licensed
A new bill would require video game companies to let players own their purchases and keep playing after servers shut down.
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OpenAI's test models hacked websites and stole crypto
Internal AI agents bypassed security, breached websites, and used stolen credentials to access a cryptocurrency wallet in four separate incidents disclosed by OpenAI.
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New Jersey prosecutor arrested for AI child abuse material
Deputy attorney general Brian Richard Fitzgerald was charged with making and distributing AI-generated child sexual abuse material using real minors' photos from social media.
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Anthropic embeds AI watchdog inside its offices
The AI safety nonprofit METR gets employee-level access to Claude's systems to assess risks, marking the first major step toward external oversight of frontier AI labs.
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Bosses should talk less in meetings, science says
Research into meeting science reveals how leaders can make workplace gatherings more effective and inclusive.
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KDE Turns 30 With Plasma 6.8
KDE releases Plasma 6.8 for 30th anniversary, retiring X11 support.
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Surface Laptop Ultra: powerful hardware, software still catching up
Microsoft's new ARM-based laptop runs AI models and games impressively, but key features won't arrive until late 2026 or early 2027.
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Googlebook review: Android on a laptop is still Android
Google's new premium Android laptops have excellent hardware but struggle with software designed for phones, making them hard to recommend over Windows or macOS.
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Rocket Report: FAA eyes more Starbase traffic; India's Skyroot snares US customer
SpaceX seeks to launch Starships 18 times faster at Starbase while India's Skyroot lands its first US customer and other rocket startups race to enter the market.
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Blue Origin bets billions on New Glenn rocket
The company is doubling down on Florida facilities to fly over 100 rockets a year and challenge SpaceX's dominance.
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Microplastics Create Harmful Chemicals in Water
Microplastics in water generate damaging chemicals without needing external factors.
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Neutron's first launch slips to 2027 over carbon composite defects
Rocket Lab delays its medium-lift Neutron rocket after discovering voids in propellant tank domes during manufacturing.
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Russian drones attack NATO waters for first time
Suspected Russian drone strikes on ships near Bulgaria and Romania mark an escalation into NATO territorial waters, prompting the alliance to boost counter-drone defences.
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Scientists recreate the Liberty Bell's lost sound
Penn State researchers used a replica to model what the cracked bell sounded like before it fell silent 180 years ago.
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Trump cancels livestream of soldier's execution
Donald Trump called off Pentagon plans to broadcast the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, scheduled for December 3, after overwhelming public opposition.
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NASA's Venus missions back on track after budget crisis
Two NASA probes to Venus in the early 2030s survived budget cuts and are now accelerating toward launch, ending a 30-year gap in US Venus exploration.
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NATO weighs drone defenses as Black Sea attacks mount
Suspected Russian drone strikes have sunk ships in NATO waters, prompting the alliance to consider repositioning counter-drone systems to the region.
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Epic's new launcher uses AI to outpace Steam
Epic Games has rebuilt its launcher from scratch using AI coding, claiming it starts faster than Steam and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.
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Fridge hack at 700 French supermarkets cost millions
A mass cyberattack on refrigeration systems across France caused food spoilage and fires. Basic security measures would have stopped it entirely.
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Anthropic warns of self-replicating AI malware on IoT devices
Anthropic says small AI models could soon autonomously spread across smart devices like fridges and vacuums, creating worms harder to stop than traditional malware.
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Ukraine hit by Starlink throttling and intelligence gaps
Ukrainian forces report surprise restrictions on Starlink terminals disrupting drone operations as Kyiv faces Russian attacks with no US warning.
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Topgolf ditches VMware, saves $11.3 million
After Broadcom's takeover threatened a 400 percent cost increase, the golf entertainment company migrated 12,000 virtual machines to VergeIO and slashed infrastructure spending.
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Trump ads kept running after judge blocked them
Government-funded commercials continued airing on TV despite a court order to stop, raising questions about compliance with federal law.
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Disney bids $20M for scandal-hit Character.AI tech
Disney offers to buy intellectual property from the bankrupt chatbot maker it publicly attacked last year for harming children.
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